Gastric problems: Can they be cured?

Kalbe.co.id - The survey done on Jakarta population last year involved 1645 respondents, and the result shows that 60% of those people have digestive diseases. This means the problem of gastric diseases has taken a big part in our community and needs our attention.

Those are the words of Dr.Ari Fahrial Syam SpPD-KGEH,MMB from the Department of Internal Diseases of FKUI-RSCM, Sunday, 2 March 2008 at Semanggi Expo at a talk-show which is a part of “The 2nd Annual Women's Health Seminar & Expo 2008”.

Gastric pain is a health problem that often forces someone to come to a doctor in order to seek medical attention. A gastrointestinal disorder that brings a patient to a doctor has different interpretations. But in general, when someone feels some pain in the pit of his or her stomach they usually say they have gastric pain. When observed from the word maag itself, (stomach) comes from a Dutch word, which means gastric, therefore people who have gastric problems will feel pain in their stomach. In medical terms, the word that is often used is dyspepsia. Definitely, dyspepsia itself means pain or discomforts around the pit of the stomach. Patients with dyspepsia or gastric pains usually come with other complaints such as nausea up to vomiting. Besides those there are other disorders such as bloated, feeling very full, decreased appetite, burp often. Actually almost everyone at least once have felt some problems with their stomachs, but not every problem is associated with gastrointestinal disorders.

The Categories of Digestive Diseases
In general digestive diseases is grouped into organic and functional. The division is done after an examination, especially an endoscopy, in this case of the upper digestive tract. Functional Dyspepsia is determined after examinations through endoscopy, ultrasound and laboratory tests that found no other disorders from the stomach.

The definition of dyspepsia or gastric pain is finally made public last year by a world expert in the field of digestive diseases who stated that people who have gastric disorders feel pain and warm sensation in the pit of their stomachs, a fullness or discomfort after a meal and feeling of being full for at least 3 months in 6 months. From this definition, it is clear that people have functional gastrointestinal problems when they have been feeling the discomfort for a long time.

Functional dyspepsia is closely related with psychological factor. Various researches have been proved the relation between the functional factor of gastrointestinal problems and the stress factor that someone is going through, especially anxiety. The research that we have done and international researches showed that the occurrence of functional gastric pains is more often than organic gastric pains, which is 70%-80% of the cases. But surely, there is a bigger frequency from functional digestive disorders because it is not every time we have gastrointestinal problems we think we are under stress. We still have to think about the organic cause of the gastric pain itself. By knowing the cause of the pain, then a more focused treatment could be administered.

In this talk-show, Dr. Helmin Agustina from PT Kalbe Farma introduced Promag Double Action which contains a combination of antacid and H2-Blocker and hence it neutralize the stomach acid and delays the secretion of excess gastric acid, with fast acting and long working hours (up to 12 hours).

In certain cases, an endoscopy is a required procedure to ensure what is actually happening to the stomach. By knowing the abnormalities, in the end a complete treatment can be done and eventually the gastric problems can be cured.